Growing Your Practice – Making That First Hire

Editor's Note: This is the second in a new Insightful Accountant series by Karen Dellaripa and Rich Strait of Beyond Your Books. Each month, Karen and Rich will show you how to go from solo practitioner to building a practice and document how their year is progressing.

Karen: Last month, we discussed some of the emotional and practical concerns a solo practitioner may have before plunging into growing a practice. Most solo practitioners I’ve known reach an apogee of success, another way of saying you’re hitting a wall.

You keep saying "yes" to clients, cancelling that night out with friends to catch up, always seem behind on client deliverables and now you’re getting 50 emails about an app that just went down.

Of course, your social circles think it’s great that you work for yourself. Ugh!

Okay, so you want to hire someone to help take the load off. But what exactly will they be doing for you? For myself, and many of my colleagues I started out wishing for a personal assistant. You know, to answer email, return phone calls, handle data entry… the thousand and one little things that seem to account for too much of our time.

Trouble is, that may not be the best way to launch your budding company.

Carefully consider how likely you will find your ideal PA – someone that has the level of experience and self-motivation you expect, at a pay rate you can afford. But before you write that help wanted ad, stop and really examine if you’re supporting your longer-term goals. Are you simply cloning what you’re doing, or looking forward at what it takes to launch a practice?

My suggestion, start with two lists – one of all that stuff you want to get off your back, but the other more important list – all the new stuff you’ll have to add to grow your practice. Then, revisit it often, keep refining, take enough time that your comfortable these two mini-plans are right.

Oh, and expect they could very well be wrong.

My own first three hires all ended without really fulfilling my expectations – or theirs. The reality of trying to offload seemingly mundane tasks, required expertise and skill I took for granted.

My first admin had a strong background working for several accounting departments in large companies. She had references. She was smart. She owned her own laptop and even accepted my hourly part-time offer.

Yet, why should I have expected she could answer the mail without the myriad of nuanced details I knew about my clients? How could I anticipate that her years of using enterprise-level accounting systems wouldn’t somehow transparently translate into using QBO for small businesses?

Then there were the perks of working from home and erratic hours with insufficient support from me. So, how dare she quit?!

Accepting that I had to invest time before I could save time, I quickly hit the “repost ad” button on Craigslist and tried again. As much as I absolutely loved reading everyone’s personal story and hastily written resume, it became a bit tiring doing this fifty times.

I looked for short cuts to scan the pile quickly – QuickBooks – Computers – internet – A couple accounting jobs-mental keyword-of-the-moment… I was a human resource machine. Okay, so I made a few phone calls and hired someone over the phone. She lasted 2 weeks.

On my third and fourth tries, I hired Rich.

Rich: It’s kind of funny since Karen hired me twice, and the first time I quit.

I had just started my own independent endeavor and she offered me some part-time work to help make ends meet. It sounded like a good fit, simple data entry, work when I want, and enough hours that the cash would sure help. She introduced me to Bill.com and I began transposing client bills.

The reality was I hated it. Made a ton of mistakes. I wasn’t very engaged in the outcome of the task, clearly did not have very good transcription skills and quickly grew bored, this was, yuck, real work. After a few weeks, I really didn’t look forward to the routine, and I could tell Karen was growing weary of catching and fixing my mistakes. It was awkward since we were friends but I gave her a hug and quit.

It wasn’t until a few months later, after Karen had put together a business plan and engaged me for a new position that I felt truly motivated. Same company, same Karen, same apps, but not the same role. Strategy, marketing, systems development were all way more interesting to me. Instead of feeling like work I looked forward to the challenges of each day.

Now I had a goal and responsibilities that best fit my experience. Instead of a worker, I became a contributor.

Moral of the story is make sure you hire the right person for the right job for the right reasons. And be prepared if you don’t get it right the first time!

Karen: Okay so Rich sucked at data entry, I had made the classic mistake of thinking I could offload menial tasks, ones that took a special set of skills, and still grow my business. I failed three times in a row and it was demoralizing.

It wasn’t until I changed my approach, developed a growth plan and put the right person in place that things took off.

Yes, I had to keep doing the data entry for quite a while longer. And answering the mail. But now I had someone driving the growth – Rich ran with my high-level business proposal and built out a 12-month plan of action.

We obtained our LLC, implemented value pricing, started researching practice management systems, began marketing, and drafted a library of proposal and engagement templates. We also revamped our hiring methodology and discovered Rich even liked reading a hundred resumes. One month into this alternative path and I felt we were truly on our way to building something better.

What we learned from this experience is that to grow a practice there are multiple paths. You need to be willing to try, maybe get it wrong and try again. It’s important to be honest with yourself what you really want to achieve.

If you’re looking to offload some of your work to someone else, consider beyond the financial investment, be ready to invest additional time to training and support... after all you have standards and expect it to be done your way so you must be part of the process. The alternative path is to hire for the new stuff, and find someone with a skill set you don’t possess.

To underline what we talked about last month, don’t let the fear stop you. Choose a path, take it and find your destiny.

Founded in April 2003, Beyond Your Books is an accounting consulting firm for small and mid-size profit and non-profit organizations. Karen Dellaripa and Rich Strait work mainly with professional service companies such as legal, financial, engineering, real estate and executive search firms, as well as those who specialize in light manufacturing, retail and franchises.

Beyond Your Books focuses on providing its clients with accurate, real time meaningful financial information to assist them in making important

business decisions that will positively impact their business and help them grow. Done using a nearly paperless process, it offers standardized workflow processes and an ongoing commitment to technology and staff development.